


piper is going to sanctuary hills

by cosmoscorpse



Series: ulysses [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, In Sheep's Clothing, Post-Canon, This is Not the Canon Ending you were looking for, bad ways to deal with grief, nonlinear storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7926391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> “It’s time for you to go,” Blue says.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Piper doesn’t argue with her. </i>
</p><p>//</p><p>Or, where you're going, where you've been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	piper is going to sanctuary hills

**Author's Note:**

> This story chronologically takes place after [the floors of silent seas](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7516963); it is not vital to read that to understand this, but I would recommend it ( ͡º ͜ʖ ͡º)

x.

“It’s time for you to go,” Blue says. Voice distant, eyes hidden. Her hands are trembling.

Piper doesn’t argue with her.

 

xi.

Piper’s not useless, out in the ruins. A person doesn’t get to be as old as she is if they _are_ ; Piper _isn’t_ old, not in the way Nick is, or Deacon might’ve been. Late twenty-something. Still, she would have been eaten alive a long, long time ago if she didn’t know her way around a weapon, know which roads to take and which roads to stay way clear of.

Piper’s got Nat to look after, too. She’s not useless.

Maybe living in the city’s made her soft, though.

She doesn’t know.

 

i.

The woman’s sitting in the darkest corner the Dugout has. Blue smoke is wreathed around her head, a glowing cigarette held loosely between her fingers, the cherry glimmering dully off the metal of a chest plate. She’s got at least three guns slung over the back of her chair, a shiny .44 caliber sitting on the table in front of her, and Piper, who followed her here on a hunch, feels her stomach sink right to the ground. She swallows and squares up her shoulders, marches over. Feels the woman’s eyes burning a hole through her forehead.

She looks like an omen.

“Hi,” Piper says, sitting herself in the chair directly across from her. She leans back, pulls a cock-sure grin, projecting _confidence_ ( _‘nuisance,’_ as Nick used to call it), “I don’t think we managed to meet properly, back at the gates. I’m Piper Wright.”

The woman keeps staring for another long, long minute.

Then the corner of her mouth twitches up, and she leans forward, producing a glass from empty air and sliding it to Piper. She pours out a healthy amount whiskey-or-bourbon-or-old-Bobrov’s-Best into the glass, and then an equal amount into her own. She stubs her cigarette out on the table, picks up her glass delicately and raises it.

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Wright,” the woman says, speaking for the first time. Her voice is honey-sweet, dark and rough. She tips the glass to her lips and swallows the contents and Piper, for lack of anything better to do, follows suit.

She nearly chokes on it, whatever it is, barely keeping her face even while it burns its way down her throat. The woman laughs and then goes quiet.

Piper _does_ wait for her to keep talking, but the woman seems content with the silence, pouring herself another drink and downing that one too, stretching her leg out to the side. She turns her face away from Piper, half-listening to Vadim telling a story at the bar.

There’s no live music in the Dugout, not unless Scarlett’s gotten _really_ drunk, and Hawthorne too. Nothing steady, not like the Third Rail. Nothing to fill awkward silences except Vadim’s loud voice. Piper taps her fingers on the table, clears her throat.

She says, “Listen, if you don’t give me a name, I’m just gonna have to call you Blue.”

She might anyway. It’s got a nice ring to it. The statement gets the woman’s attention, anyway, and her eyes slide back to pin Piper. She barks out a laugh.

“Why Blue?” she says, with her eyes and her teeth glinting. Piper swallows again, her attention flickering over the woman’s posture and the weapons she’s got lying around in plain sight, then she gestures to the Pip-Boy on the woman’s arm. That little detail’s what grabbed her attention in the first place, when the woman sauntered up to the gate.

“Pip-Boy. Vault dweller,” she throws a hand up, gesturing vaguely, “Ergo, Vault Tec ‘Blue,’ y’know?”

The woman leans forward. “Who says I’m a vault dweller?” she asks, her voice dipping low. She idly grabs her .44 and the cloth she was using to polish it. Picks up where she left off, buffering the metal right around the safety, the trigger. It’s blatantly intimidation and she’s not even trying to be subtle about it. Piper’s a little impressed, and a little terrified.

She tilts her head, spreads her palms out flat. “Where else would you get the Pip-Boy?”

A dangerous kind of smile spreads on the woman’s face. She says, “Maybe I killed someone for it.”

Piper swallows.

Maybe she did.

 

xii.

Piper’s not useless, is the thing. She’s scrappy in a fight, intuitive, and she’s held her own for years and years, moving from settlement to settlement to settlement.

But the other thing is, is that Blue is the heavy hitter in their little partnership, and it doesn’t matter sometimes how scrappy and intuitive Piper is, because all she carries is a .10 cal that Blue named Hornet as a joke one afternoon.

 

Anyway.

She meets the deathclaw in Cambridge.

 

xiii.

She’s lost feeling in her left hand, and she thinks that’s probably a good thing. It means that she doesn’t feel the pain – at least not yet. When it hits, though, oh boy. Oh boy. She can hardly breathe through the knot in her throat, can feel the blood slicking hot down her front, from where she’s got her arm jammed tight up against her chest.

Piper’s got her eyes closed, and she can still hear the god _damned_ lizard pacing around outside the hole she’s shoved herself into. It shakes the ground it walks on, and she stumbled right into its nest. A little voice in her head says, _bad move, Piper, what’s next?_ and it sounds _suspiciously_ like Blue.

She’s still got her gun in her good hand, thank god. Didn’t drop the little weapon. It’s like a security blanket, sort of, she feels better having it, even though she knows that it’s gonna do fuck-all in actually helping her. The deathclaw screams, claws scraping at the bricks keeping Piper from it, and she can’t help but shriek, a little. There’s a little wetness on her cheeks – she can’t tell if it’s blood from her arm or another unnoticed scrape, elsewhere, or she’s crying. She might be crying.

She forces herself to breathe steady – in through her nose, out through her mouth. Repeat – repeat. She has a spare clip of ammo in the inner pocket of her jacket. Her gun had a full clip, before. She thinks she fired off at least five rounds – so. Let’s say three of those five hit home. That leaves her with seven rounds in the gun, and a grand total of nineteen bullets. She breathes deeply, steadily, reloads the clip with shaking fingers. Blood slicking down onto her palm.

She counts, and then she counts again, and she watches the blood ooze down over her fingers, and then she swears. Thunks her head against the bricks and presses her eyes shut.

It won’t be enough to even make it _flinch._

There was a fire escape on a nearby building, if she could book it there and climb up out of reach and take potshots until it loses interest? But she’d need a distraction, and she left the last of the flashbangs with Blue, and she’s bleeding.

She’d kill for a Gauss Rifle.

She grinds her forehead against the bricks. _Think_.

 _Think_.

The deathclaw howls, throwing itself against the building. Digging. Her arm starts throbbing, then aching. Oh, boy. Piper breathes in, breathes out, chokes on a scream.

 _Think_.

 

ii.

“Okay, look. You’re, what, six foot? There’s no way you’re _not_ a vault dweller,” Piper says. She’s well past her fourth shot, and Blue’s smiling indulgently at her from across the table, rolling the steadily emptying bottle in rocking, hypnotic circles. She still hasn’t given Piper a name, or anything really, but that’s fine. Blue suits her just fine as far as names go, and the more the woman dodges her observations and questions the more Piper wants her story. She can practically taste it, at this point.

That might be the alcohol. The taste, that is. Piper’s still not sure what it was, whiskey or bourbon or moonshine or some unholy union of the three.

“Nah, they just grow us big out west,” Blue says, cryptic as all hell, and goes to pour Piper another shot. Piper flails her arm, less coordinated than she’d hoped to be, covering the mouth of her glass with her hand.

“No, no more,” she says, raising a finger that she hopes is suitably stern, “I see you. I know what you’re doing.”

Blue’s eyes squint up a little. She leans forward again, resting her cheek on her fist. “What am I doing, Miss Wright?” she asks. Voice slow and measured. Piper realizes in a second of clarity that she’s not drunk at all. She’s been played, she realizes, and she doesn’t even feel that indignant about it.

Piper points directly at the woman’s chest, right at a miniscule dent in her armor plate. “You – are trying to distract me,” she says, her voice slurring, “An’ I’m tellin you now, I am not easily distract’d.”

Blue’s eyes glitter. She hides a snort behind her knuckles, and Piper makes a soft, resentful noise.

“Don’t laugh at me! I will get to the bottom of,” Piper frowns, snapping her fingers, “Of you! You’ve got a story and I _want_ it.”

Blue leans back, crossing her arms over her chest. It’s like the smoke consumes her, turning her half shadow. She shakes her head, smiles. She says, “Cross my heart, I’ve never lived an interesting day in my life.”

 

v.

“Piper.”

Danny Sullivan is bleeding out, and people are screaming for Doctor Sun, and McDonough is a synth. Blue is kneeling beside Danny, holding his hand between hers and whispering soft words of comfort at him. She’s got steel in her spine, in the line of her jaw. Piper knows this without looking. She’s saying something, _everyone_ is saying something, and Danny is making little pitiful gasping-choking noises and Piper can’t hear any of it. She’s staring transfixed at the shattered windowpanes overlooking the city, how the glass is catching the fading evening light.

“Piper!” Blue shouts. Piper jumps, turns. Full, undivided attention. Danny’s lips are turning dark, bruised looking. His legs are shattered, his free hand scrabbling weakly at the ground. He fell out the window, someone says. He’s dying, and Piper’s still – “Piper, get me a fucking stimpak from my bag, _now_.”

Helping. She can be helping. She scrambles for the bag, pulls out a stimpak. Blue snatches it from her, wastes no time tilting Danny’s head back to expose his neck and slide the needle carefully into the artery. Her hands are slicked with his blood – she leaves fingerprints and smears of it over his face, his neck.

His eyes roll. He passes out, thank God, and Blue rocks back, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. Piper lets out a harsh breath she hadn’t known she had been holding. Doctor Sun finally, _finally_ shows up and they all shuffle out of his way, obedient.

The lull is temporary. Danny’s living, and going to stay that way, but people still congregate at the scene, still press into crowds. Still hiss and shout and _now_ there’s bloodlust slinking in among them.

“A synth,” someone says.

“A fucking _synth_ ,” someone else spits.

“He pretended to be _human_ ,” someone says, the disgust dripping from it all the finality of a death knell. People start shouting, pushing, and they’re in shock now, but soon they’ll start pushing toward the elevator. She knows this.

Piper feels ill. She knows a lynch mob when she sees one, even one in utero. Blue rises to her feet, checks the bullets in the chamber of her gun, and sighs. She gestures discretely with a tilt of her head for Piper to follow, and Piper does, entranced a little by the blood on her hands, the slump of her shoulders. They slip past the crowd to the elevator.

“Let’s take care of this,” Blue says.

 

xiv.

She isn’t going to die here. She refuses.

She’s just got to figure out how to get herself out of this _shitshow_ while she’s barely armed, a good fifteen feet from the high ground, with a very angry monster pacing right outside her bolt-hole. She breathes in deep and slow, shifts and feels the throb of pain lance through her arm. She winces, her face still pressed against the bricks.

She should really use a stimpak, probably. Her stimpaks are in her bag, fifteen feet away, just about where the deathclaw lunged at her the first time and she dropped it. So. Really, she’s been lucky that the pain’s stayed mostly distant. It’s the shock, she thinks. She tilts her head back, away from the bricks, and blinks into the fading light of her hiding place. She’s getting dizzy. She’s been here too long.

She knows already that she’s going to do something stupid.

She breathes, adjusting her grip on her pistol. She’s been lucky before, and if not, well.

Well.

Someone will take care of Nat. Maybe better than she has.

She starts crawling back to the hole she crawled through. The deathclaw must hear her moving, or smell the blood she’s smearing all over the concrete, because it starts screaming again. Piper winces, swallows. Keeps moving, because the light isn’t far now. The ground shakes, the building trembles – then again, that might just be her. Shaking and trembling.

She comes out into the open. The sky’s a faint violet, deep shadows stretching out from the base of buildings, and the deathclaw is standing ten feet away, in front of the fire escape she would have used. Claws scraping the ground.

That’s all there is.

It opens its mouth, chittering slightly, tasting the air. Tilts its head, and then howls.

Piper raises her pistol, screams right back at it. Her heart’s in her throat, and what’s done is done. It closes the distance, and her mind goes blank except for –

 _Nat_ –

 

_interlude a._

She is young, young, young, sitting with her father on a dock that stretches out over the spring of water at their homestead. They are deep in the mountains and caught in an endless summer; on the other bank the pine trees stand tall and green and impenetrable, and under her feet the water runs pure. Untainted. Fish flashing silver in the depths.

Piper is young here, and small, and her father’s hat is pulled low over his brow, shading his eyes.

She remembers his hands, turning deftly, wielding a blade against soft wood and coaxing shape from it – form – but.

She cannot remember his face.

 

xv.

Three shots ring out, followed by deep silence. Her ears are ringing, sound filtering in distantly, like she’s underwater. Piper drags in an unsteady breath, and opens her eyes. She’s flat on her back, staring up at the sky. Violet, streaking with a faint orange, now. Wisps of clouds. She can feel her heartbeat in her chest, her throat, all the way through her hurt arm and down to her –

Her toes. She tries to shift her legs, can’t. There’s an enormous weight on her lower half, and she can’t – she turns her head, the ringing in her ears reaching a crescendo, the world tipping sickeningly. She feels drunk, but that can’t be right, she –

She raises her arms, dead weights, and is only vaguely aware of her gun falling from her hand, clattering on the pavement. She – she feels down to her waist, to the awful weight, and –

Oh. That’s right. There was the deathclaw. There _is_ the deathclaw, if her hands can be believed, and she doesn’t entirely trust them right now. Seeing is believing, after all, so she lifts her head, braving the tips of twists of the earth underneath her. And there it is, dead. Lying right on top of her, its slack-jawed face staring her down. She can see right down its throat, and count the teeth.

Her breath hitches in her throat. She feels cold, and distant, and her ears are still ringing. She pushes at the lizard’s hide and all she manages to do is slick blood all over its scales.

 _Nat, Nat_. She lets her head drop back to the pavement, a sob building up in her chest. She needs – she can’t get to her bag, but she needs a stimpak, needed one three hours ago, actually, and she’d kill to have Blue here, even if Blue isn’t talking to her right now, or her _sister,_ her sister –

It’s about then that she notices the individual blending into the shadows one of the buildings cast, holding his rifle like a lifeline, and she remembers that the deathclaw is dead, but she didn’t kill it.

She reaches out to him, her hand shaking. If he wanted her dead he’d have killed her already, or let the monster do it. She can’t get out from under it on her own, not down one arm like she is. She swallows, licks her dry lips. He’s got something like concern on his face, she thinks, or she’s just being optimistic.

“Help me,” she asks.

 

vi.

Geneva’s eyes are wide and frightened, and the rest of her face is as calm as standing water. Her hands hang loose and empty at her sides, very deliberately _still_. McDonough’s got a rough hand on her waist, the muzzle of his pistol pressed up against the curve of her skull behind her ear. He’s speaking – Piper’s not listening. She should be, but she doesn’t think she could hear anything past the roaring in her ears, the thrum of her own breath. She thinks she should feel – vindicated, maybe. She’s been saying McDonough’s a synth for years now.

She wishes she wasn’t right.

She and Blue are standing in the doorway to his office, their guns held loosely in their hands. Piper doesn’t know how to handle a hostage situation – she didn’t think Blue did either, but following her lead is better than twiddling her fucking thumbs. She seems to be handling herself just fine.

Geneva could die. For all the times she’s made her want to bash her own head against a wall, Piper really, _really_ doesn’t want to see that happen.

Blue’s voice is calm and cold as steel when she says, “We can _help_ you, McDonough, but not if you’ve got a hostage. _Let her go_.”

McDonough’s face twists. His hands tremble, the barrel twisting a little bit more forcefully against Geneva’s head. Piper catches a flicker of fear cross her face, and she feels her heart sink right to her toes.

For a moment, no one breathes.

“Fine,” he spits, and shoves Geneva away from himself. She stumbles and Piper moves on instinct to catch her, bundle the shaking woman up in her arms and drag her behind the wall, away from McDonough, who has raised his pistol. He’s aiming it at Blue’s forehead, and his hands are shaking. He says, “I have demands.”

“Okay,” Blue says, her posture relaxed. McDonough gestures with the barrel of his pistol, a jerk of his head.

“I am going to walk out of this city,” he says, “And you are going to let me go.”

Blue looks, for a moment, as if she’s considering it.

“No!” Piper blurts, fury rising up in her chest. Blue glances at her, sidelong, and Piper remembers the loaded weapon pointed at her friend’s face too late to stop herself from continuing, “You’re going on trial, McDonough – you’re going to _answer_ for what you’ve done!”

He laughs, cold and broken and bitter. Geneva shudders next to Piper, and peeks out from behind the wall to watch. Blue is a stone, an immovable object.

“Trial?” he asks, a note of hysteria creeping into his voice, “We all know what a farce that’d be – no _. I_ am walking out of this city a _free_ man.”

“And what then, McDonough?” Blue asks. Her eyes are blank; her voice is soft. “There’s no Institute for you to go back to – what are you going to do?”

He blinks and wavers, a shadow of uncertainty and fear passing over his face. “I,” he begins, then shakes himself, “I’ll figure something out! I am _resourceful_ , you of all people ought to know, _General,_ they built us to be-”

He drops to the ground with half of his head painting the wall behind him, a red bloom forming in the center of his chest. Blue sags like a wire’s been cut, her face hidden from Piper’s view, her hand and the pistol held loosely in it dropping back to her side.

She never even saw her arm go up.

 

xvi.

Piper is entranced by the movement of the stranger’s hands. He’s got her propped up against a wall, swathed deep in the shadows at the root of a tall building, after having lifted the deathclaw up off of her like it was nothing. Maybe she was just far gone enough that she’s not remembering it right – lifting her own arms had seemed herculean, almost. It still is almost too much to be sitting up, dizzy from blood loss, to keep her arm raised up slightly, propped on her knee while the stranger works on it.

Too much damage for just a stim, _ha ha_. Piper lets her head fall back against the wall, the stim fritzing in her nerves while the Med-X sings in her veins. She’s not happy about that, nope, but the stranger had insisted on it, and he hadn’t looked happy about it but hey – her arm was toast. _The stitches won’t be pleasant_ , he’d said, _actually, none of this will be pleasant._

 _Jesus fuck_ , Piper’d said, _fine, fine, do it._

She’s lucky. The stranger has steady hands.

“What I want to know,” he says, his voice slow and steady, threading the needle in and out of her skin, coaxing form back into it, “Is how the animal got close enough to do _this_ , and yet-”

He tilts his head, actions speaking louder than words. _And yet, here you are._ Piper swallows, feels pain looming distant. Locked away. “Luck,” she rasps, cracking a sly grin. The stranger grimaces, ties off the last stitch with an elegant, understated calm. Reminds her of Blue on her better days. “Hey, thanks.”

He looks away, the last sunlight of the day catching the curve of his cheek, turning him to shadow and gold. He’s got the bluest eyes Piper’s ever seen – clear as cold water. “It’s of no concern,” he says in that soft voice of his, and maybe it’s the Med-X, maybe it’s the blood loss, maybe Piper’s just a goddamn nosey individual, but she wants to _know_ him. It’s like an itch.

“’It’s of no concern’,” she mimics, pitching her voice down an octave or two. Keeps the grin on her face for when he glances up at her, startled, “What, okay, you make a habit of rescuing folk from monsters and sticking around to patch them up?”

She thinks there might be a smile twitching around the corner of his mouth, she’s not sure. He stands up, says, “I did not use any of my personal medical supplies on you. Assisting you came at no cost to myself.” He sounds like he’s rationalizing it.

“That’s not the _point_ ,” Piper whines, pushing herself up after him. Clumsy as hell, fine motor skills gone to shit with the Med-X. She stops when it becomes clear the wall’s doing most of the standing for her. “Where did you _come_ from? Who _are_ you?”

“Where did _you_ come from?” he shoots back, quicker than his other responses, and Piper is delighted.

“Oh, shit, Blue would like you,” she says. He dodges questions just like she does, with just as much tact. She loves it. She says, “Diamond City.”

He hesitates for a moment before saying, “Bunker Hill.” His eyes rest on the space right above her shoulder, and his hands move like he doesn’t quite know what to do with them. _Quid pro quo_ it is, then. She rests her head against the brick, breathes. She’d kill for a cigarette. She’d kill for a _bed_ , but she’d rather die than go back to Diamond City tonight.

She’ll make do. She nods, flaps her good arm in the direction of her bag. “Hand me that, would ya?”

He does and she regrets it almost immediately. The strap slips in her nerveless fingers, still slick with tacky, drying blood. The world grays for a moment, spins.

The stranger stares at her. If he sticks around any longer she’ll have to give him a name. His face twitches into an emotion Piper can’t quite pin down, but if she tried she’d say it was somewhere between _moral obligation_ and _morbid curiosity_.

He says, “You’re in no condition to travel anywhere alone, tonight.”

Piper tilts her head onto the wall, closing her eyes against the spinning earth. She snorts.

 

vii.

They settle back into their room at the Dugout, listening to the raised clamor of voices in the common room. Piper’s hands are shaking and she hides it by busying them with a lit cigarette. Her stomach does somersaults. Blue sits on the bed and takes apart the pistol she used to murder McDonough and cleans it slowly, methodically. She’s got blood spattered across her face, a light speckling that looks like morbid freckles, and her eyes are blank.

Piper’s only seen this look on her face twice before and it turns her cold to the bone, colder than the biting January wind tearing through the city. Piper swallows, and inhales and exhales her smoke and she tries, fails, to not think about Blue’s hand holding that quiet weapon. Lives, blown out like candles. Unmarked graves. All the things she’s done.

She does not know what’ll be done with McDonough’s body.

“If you have something to say, say it,” Blue says, voice wooden. Piper swallows past the sour taste in her throat.

“You,” she starts, clutching her cigarette like a lifeline, trying to find words for the sinking feeling in her gut, “You killed him.”

Blue lets her head roll back. She stares at the ceiling, eyes glassy. “I did,” she agrees easily, and Piper’s still got a storm rolling around in her chest. She makes a frustrated, abortive noise in the back of her throat.

“What the _hell,_ Blue?” Piper spits, her fingers curling, “What gave you the right to make that call?”

Blue’s lips press together, a flicker of indignation crossing her face so quickly Piper thinks, for a moment, that she might be imagining it. The tightening of her jaw, of her fingers on her pistol. She’s silent for a long, long minute, Vadim’s muffled and distant laughter grounding the two of them. “I made that call when he shot Sullivan out of a window, took a hostage, and held a gun up to my face,” she says finally, softly.

Piper’s mouth twists into a frown. She takes a drag on her cigarette, the storm in her chest settling into something between anger and fear and sorrow. “We should have had a trial.”

“It wouldn’t have meant anything.”

“It would have meant everything!” Piper hisses through gritted teeth, “It would have meant justice for the people.”

Blue raises an eyebrow. “ _Justice_ ,” she spits the word out, “Piper, what d’ya think he’d have been tried for? Being a synth?”

“Maybe being an _informant_ for the Institute?” her voice ratchets up – she can’t believe that Blue’s _arguing_ with her on this – “He didn’t have Diamond City’s interests at heart, not ever! He exiled all the ghouls, do you remember that?”

“He got _voted_ into office,” Blue says softly, forcefully, “By the people. There wasn’t ever a coup, here. He – Piper, you have to understand, too, the Institute never let them _choose_ what to do – he was just following orders.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Piper snaps quick, loud, and she’s not even sure if she’s talking about McDonough anymore, or the times Before, that Blue’s done this, _god_ , “He deserved a trial and the people here deserved some kind of goddamn forward motion, but no! Instead you – _you!_ – you keep playing judge, and jury, and _executioner!_ ”

Blue fixes her with a cold, cold stare, and stands up slowly, the brace on her leg clicking in the silence. Out in the common room someone starts singing, rough and terrible. Glass shatters. Someone laughs. Piper breathes past the lump in her throat. Sees in her mind’s eye Blue’s arm rising, her finger on the trigger.

“I really hope,” Blue says very carefully, very quietly, “That you and I are still talking about McDonough.”

Piper swallows. Thinks of Blue’s arm rising and a heavy body hitting the ground. Limbs tangled up and absolute dead silence, then - breaking glass, from the other room. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding in.

“Because,” Blue continues, enunciating carefully, moving closer, taller – intimidating, and Piper’ll have words with her about that later, after _this_ , “If you are implying for one _goddamn_ second that _He_ didn’t get _exactly_ what was coming to him, then-”

She cuts herself off, breathes deeply and turns her head away from Piper. Casts her face into shadow.

“There should have been a trial,” Piper snaps halfheartedly, bitterness still rising like a living thing in her stomach, “I don’t care what McDonough did, or what you thought, it wasn’t your decision to make.”

“They would have just hanged him,” Blue says, weariness clinging to her voice.

Piper can’t breathe. “You don’t know that,” she says, “They might have exiled him.”

Blue shakes her head. “No, he was right. They would have murdered him, and they wouldn’t have been clean about it. If you can’t see that, then you’re blinding yourself,” she pauses, seems to think about her next words, then gestures at the door, the raucous noises drifting in from beyond it and says, “Or maybe you wanted it too. Listen. They’re celebrating that he’s dead. I haven’t ever seen a place _hate_ synths as much as the ‘Great Green _Jewel_ ’ does.”

Blue sighs, drags a hand down over her face. She pauses, then shakes her head again, rueful.

“Kinda makes you wonder what the people here have been reading, huh?”

Piper rocks back, pressing her back to the wall. Breath coming short. “This isn’t my fault,” she says, and Blue turns her head back to face her. Eyes as dark and cold as deep, still water.

“No,” she agrees, “But you didn’t help, either.”

 

xvii.

“What’s your name?” Piper asks the stranger, later, in the still-quiet of his camp. Her limbs feel heavy, her head feels unmoored from her heart, drifting. She regrets asking the moment the words slip out of her throat, feeling firmly like she’s been in this position before. Feeling sick to her stomach about it. She turns her head, brushing her hair off of her cheek.

The stranger says nothing anyway. She can see him sitting next to his campfire, his face an impassive one.

“Never mind,” she sighs, and closes her eyes.

 

iii.

 _Never lived an interesting day in_ – oh, bullshit.

“Oh, bullshit,” Piper says, leaning back heavily, “That’s a lie.”

Blue’s eyes glitter, her teeth shining white. She goes to grab a cigarette, tapping one out of her pack and into her palm. She shrugs loosely, cupping her fingers around the flame that she flicks out of a match.

“Maybe,” she says, “Maybe not.”

 

_interlude b._

“Piper,” her father says.

She reaches a hand up, brushing her fingers against the blue of the sky.

 

xviii.

“So, what were you doing in Bunker Hill?” she asks absentmindedly, her coat slung over her shoulders while she inspects the healing edges of the wound on her arm. It’s a puckered red, scabbing in dark clots, running from the meat of her forearm down to her palm. She’s lucky it wasn’t deeper – she’s lucky she can move her hand at all, she thinks. “You meet Kay? Deb?”

The stranger nods from where he’s taken the lead, only a second’s beat of silence betraying his hesitation. “I worked with Kay for some time,” he says slowly, shifting his rifle in his grip. “Then I worked for Deb, on caravan detail.”

“That’s neat,” Piper says, tucking her arm back against her side, hefting her pistol in her good hand, “They’re good ladies. It’s awful, what happened – I’ve been meaning to get out and visit them.”

He makes a soft noise in his throat. “Bunker Hill has recovered admirably from the,” he clears his throat, falls silent for a moment. He finishes softly, “The incident there.”

Piper blinks. “The incident,” she repeats. It’s a hell of a way to understate it, ‘ _the incident’_. “Well, that’s good to hear.”

“Yes,” he agrees quietly, and flicks his eyes forward. They fall silent, moving quietly through the ruins. Piper holds her gun and counts the bullets and categorizes every twinge of pain coming back to her arm. There’s a wind coming down the street that groans through the buildings, hissing out of the dark, empty windows.

 “Listen,” she says after a time, when the silence grows thin, “I’m fine, really. You don’t need to ‘escort me’ anywhere.”

He raises an eyebrow at her, a minute shift in his non-expression.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says almost kindly, “You can barely hold your weapon steady. It would be a stupid waste of my efforts to allow you to get yourself killed.”

 _Well, isn’t he just a ray of sunshine_ , she thinks, drawing back, a little bit offended. The motion has the added bonus of making her stumble on some loose rubble, so. Maybe she sees where he’s coming from, a bit. Doesn’t mean she has to be happy about it.

“Harsh,” she says.

“Truth,” he counters amiably, “Also, I was coming this way regardless.”

She rolls her eyes, shivers as the wind picks up. “Well, then,” she trails off, her words curling in her throat. She draws in on herself, against the cold, holding her coat closed with two clumsy fingers. There are dark clouds rolling in on the horizon. “I – appreciate it, I guess. Thank you. Again.”

He tilts his head to her, the expression on his face frozen between nonchalance and – surprise?

He clears his throat. “You are welcome,” he says, softly and somewhat hesitantly, like he’s not entirely certain how to reply – if he’s doing it correctly. It’s endearing. Piper feels a smile start tugging at the corner of her mouth. He clears his throat again, looks away.

They lapse back into silence and continue moving. Piper kicks at stones and watches where she puts her feet and holds her pistol and counts her heartbeat aching through her arm The clouds gather above them, and Piper tastes something sour, like live copper, in the back of her mouth.

She looks up, and realizes where he’s been leading them, and she goes cold.

She swallows past the live-wire taste, her stomach twisting into knots.

“Hey,” she says, her eyes wide and voice hoarse. She reaches out a hand, her fingers barely brushing the plane of his shoulder, “Hey, we shouldn’t be here.”

She doesn’t need a Geiger counter _click-click-clicking_ to feel the radiation here. Not with the crater and its foul water opening up in front of her. And, Cambridge, of course – she should have been paying more attention, she’s not sure how she managed to overlook how far south and how far west they were heading, but – _god_. Too far south and too far west and too close to the river to be going anywhere but here. She can taste the rads in the air. Her hands are shaking and he’s just – standing there, staring, blue eyes empty and the _weirdest_ non-expression on his face, staring at the ruin, and Piper – Piper reaches out, lays a hand on his shoulder.

“This isn’t a healthy place to be, Sunshine,” she says, naming him because what else can she call him, how else is she going to drag him back? “Come on, we shouldn’t _be_ here.”

His hands are slack. Piper’s arm hurts, and she’s going to leave him here. She will. The truth of that rises up in her chest like a living, too-large thing. She nearly screams in frustration – as it is she bites down on her cheek hard enough to draw blood.

 _God, he reminds her of_ -

“ _Let’s go_ ,” she begs, tasting the blood in her mouth, the rads in the air, her hand against his heart.

He blinks, and in one fluid movement turns away from the crater.

“Of course,” he says, “Let’s go.”

 

iv.

The cherry of her cigarette glows a warm, vicious red in the blue gloom. Piper feels drunk and happy, like she’s teetering on the edge of something. She swallows.

Blue glances up at her from under her lashes, smiles like a shark. She says, “Miss Wright, how would you like to come rescue a detective with me?”

 

viii.

“Are those _track marks_?”

And they are, they are. Piper’s going to scream, or cry, or both. They’re clustered in the crook of Blue’s right arm – and Piper’d know the shape of them anywhere, even if Blue didn’t look away, shameful, try to hide them. Blue looks hollowed out, even as anger overtakes her expression. Even as she sits very still on the edge of the bed, looking up at Piper. Her eyes are burning.

“Yes, Piper, they’re _goddamn_ track marks,” she spits.

“What have you been taking,” Piper demands more than asks, “ _What are you taking?_ ”

Blue swallows hard.

“Med-X,” she says finally. Piper feels like she’s been socked in the gut. _Med-X, again_ , is what Blue doesn’t say. _Med-X, like before._

Piper throws her hands up, her throat growing tight. “Oh good! You’re just a Med-X addict,” she says, tone mocking and made to cut. There’s no way she’s not an addict, not with the way her hands are shaking, the way her words are slurring, the number of bruises on her arms, “Holy _shit_ , Blue, what were you thinking?”

Blue scrubs a hand over her eyes. “I’m not addicted to anything, Piper-”

“Bullshit-” Piper cuts in.

“Jesus Christ, I’m not!” Blue’s voice is hoarse, just short of a shout. All Piper can see is the way her hands are shaking, her eyes darting all over. She’s not even trying to hide her tells and Piper feels heartsick and heavy. “Fuck, what’s your problem?”

“You’ve got a _kid_ back home, Blue,” she says, voice all coiled up and tense. She’s definitely crying, “What the hell are you going to tell him?”

She shakes her head, starts, “We’re not going to-”

Piper talks over her, louder, “It’s Med-X right now, but what’s next, yeah? You’re going to start shooting up Psycho? _Fury_?”

“That’s not how it works and you know it,” Blue hisses low.

“Where does it _end_ , Blue?” Piper shouts, “Are we gonna have to bury you? You gonna make Nick and Shaun and Hancock and I do that?”

They go quiet, the two of them, Piper standing near the door, crying, Blue frozen on the edge of the bed, her eyes wide. McDonough’s blood still spattered across her face. She looks wild, untameable, and she breathes, “Stop.”

Piper shakes her head, wipes angrily at her tears and the snot coming out of her nose, “I mean, that wouldn’t be anything new, would it?” she says.

Blue says, “Stop it.”

Piper hesitates, sighs. She holds her hands out palms-up, entreating. She says, “Listen, Blue. I _know_ that you’re grieving, but-”

Blue interrupts her with a thick, choked, abortive noise. Her knuckles turn white where they’re gripping the bed. “Stop it,” she repeats, monotone.

“-But this isn’t healthy! You can’t – do you think this is what _he_ would have wanted?” she presses, her voice getting louder again.

Blue makes the same harsh sound, discordant and halfway to a sob, and she surges to her feet, one of her hands fisted at her side, the other raised up, and Piper flinches back, knocking her head against the wall. Blue freezes, her eyes dark and face devoid of – anything.

Piper’s heart is racing. The wall is solid against her back, and she can feel her heartbeat throbbing through where she hit her head. Slowly, slowly, Blue’s arm goes down.

Piper shakes her head, tastes bile in the back of her throat. She swallows, and says, “Jesus Christ, Edith, he wouldn’t even _recognize_ you.”

 

xix.

“I needed to see it,” the stranger says, his voice quiet and somber. Night’s fallen, and they’ve made it to the northern edge of Cambridge, holed up in an old laundromat. Made a fire in the center of the room and burned up old chairs and magazines. The light flickers over the geometry of his face. Piper’s still spitting rads, the chalky taste of Rad-X in her mouth, the sweet drag of another stimpak. Still sick with it.

“You needed to _see_ it,” Piper repeats, dumbfounded. She – understands. Maybe. It’s still a wild and foreign concept, to be out from under the shadow of the Institute, and plenty of people need to see something to believe it, but the crater’s nothing new now. Almost half a year old.

He nods slowly, and sips from a can of purified he’d pulled from his pack. Piper leans her head back, yearns for a stiffer drink than the mug of hot half-tea in her hand.

“You know,” she says haltingly, feeling something like a stone in water, sinking, “When I brought my sister to Diamond City, it was to keep her safe. So she could grow up safe. The – the wall was broken. Somebody’d patched it up with a bookcase. It’s been fixed since then, sure, but. You don’t forget something like that.”

He sets the can down gently, clasps his hands together in his lap.

She grins suddenly, lopsided and raw, something like laughter building in her chest, “And then, a few months ago, the Institute was gone, and it was like – I moved Nat away from Diamond City. I figured she’d be safer and happier up north and maybe, maybe she’d get to have a childhood. Whatever’s left of that for her,” she raises her hand up, regarding the stitching, “But here I am, going to get her and move her again.”

“Where will you go?” he asks softly. Piper sighs and lets her arm fall back down.

“I don’t know,” she shrugs, “Set up shop somewhere. People’ve gotta need a paper, somewhere.”

She feels like a broken record. She feels like she’s sinking down. She looks up at him, this stranger whose _name_ she doesn’t even know, with his strange expressions and his clipped voice and his –

“And you,” she says, her voice feeling too loud, “I was lucky to meet you.”

He looks wary and tired beyond measure. He swallows, his throat visibly contracting, and then he nods. “Luck,” he whispers across the space between him and the fire and her. Piper raises her mug to that, and he follows suit.

She smiles, softer, kinder than she feels she has in months. God, but she misses her sister, and she misses Blue, even now. Or she misses the idea of Blue. Blue-that-was, Before.

_I needed to see it._

“What’s your name?” she tries again, gentle.

His eyes flick away. He breathes in deeply, twists his hands together. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, and _oh_ , that’s strange. Ordinarily she’d pry – even more than she already had – but she’s not keen on breaking a fragile peace. Not so soon anyway.

“Okay,” she says.

She clears her throat, raises her arm up again, this time raising an eyebrow and gesturing carefully at the stranger. “These stitches look great,” she says, chipper, changing the subject, “So, thanks for that. I’ll have a sick scar to show my sis. Did Kay teach you field medicine?”

He blinks languidly, then shakes his head.

“No,” he says, “Though she did teach me some of her unique remedies, I already had the basic skills. My – it was. Important, that I learned them.”

It’s something about the light, then, how it plays over his face and casts shadows. The elegant twist of his fingers, his halting, stuttering silence. The vulnerability in his eyes when he gazed upon the crater and maybe the storm raging outside of the hole they’ve made a camp in –

Piper feels something building up in her chest, a budding realization. A dawning epiphany. It’s like a shot of ice into her veins. _Oh_ , she thinks.

She closes her eyes.

“What did you do before you met Kay?” she asks, her tone carefully measured. A stilted quiet fills the room, suffocating, and she knows the answer.

She _knows._

She opens her eyes, sees him sitting frozen, his knuckles turned pale, his face open, vulnerable. Brave, too, with a defiant edge, like he’s daring her to make her next move.

_Kinda makes you wonder what the people here have been reading._

All Piper can think is, oh, of _course_ he couldn’t give a name. He doesn’t have one.

She’s so _tired_.

 

ix.

It would be easier if Edith hit her, or screamed, or raised her gun to Piper’s forehead and put her finger on the trigger. A part of Piper expects that, flinches back from it the second the words drop from her mouth. It’s low, and there’s a little part of Piper that regrets saying it.

She expects violence – what happens instead is that Edith deflates.

She stumbles back to the bed and sinks heavily onto the mattress. She looks stricken, gasping for breath. She covers her face with her hands.

 

_interlude c._

“Piper,” her father says, his hat pulled low over his brow, shading his eyes. His hands carry a knife deftly, coaxing form and shape out of dark wood. He tells her stories, when he’s not singing. Shadows stretch through the woods around them.

“Darling girl,” her father says, turning his whittling over and over in his hands, “This world’s gonna try to chew you up, babygirl. You’re going to have to be brave, and you’re going to have to be good. Can you do that?”

Under her back the water runs pure, untainted. Fish flashing silver in the depths. She reaches a hand up, brushing her fingers against the blue of the sky.

Her father leans back, sighs.

“Don’t you let this world chew you up. Don’t you let it make you anything less than what you are.”

 

xx.

Piper breathes in, and Piper breathes out. She bites down on her fear and lays down and turns her back towards him.

She says, “Well, I’m well and truly beat. I’m gonna crash – you good taking first watch?”

It’s a calculated move – it’s a show of trust. The best and only olive branch Piper can offer right now.

He’s gone when she wakes up.

 

x.

“Get out,” Edith says, her voice scraped raw, “It’s time for you to go, Piper.”

Her hands are trembling.

Piper doesn’t argue with her.

 

**Author's Note:**

> y'all heres some more
> 
> In All Seriousness, thank you for reading! This is part the second in a much longer planned series. Got questions? They'll probably be answered! ... Sometime, anyway. As always, I'm over at seaborgois on tumblr if anyone wants to talk shop. 
> 
> See ya next time!


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